From Elite to Rollercoaster Tycoon: 20 years of sim games, part 2

In part two of our epic history of video game sims, we abandon virtual …

In part one of our epic history of video game sims, we dug deep into the social, political, and personal. But sims have always excelled at something else: putting people behind the controls of multimillion-dollar pieces of hardware.

Learning to fly

Flight simulators existed in various forms before the advent of the microcomputer, but never really for an enthusiast market—at least, not in any sophisticated form—until Bruce Artwick's creation of Flight Simulator in late 1979.

Given personal computing at the time, the first installment of Flight Simulator was necessarily simple, with tiled wireframe graphics, a chugging frame rate, and a rudimentary heads-up display that covered half the screen. But it evolved considerably in the following years, especially after Microsoft licensed the property from Artwick's company, subLOGIC, in 1982.

The game progressively gained graphical fidelity, more accurate simulation, and greater depth—including additional game modes and aircraft (of all shapes and sizes), as well as user-generated content (which emerged initially through hacks, then became officially supported in the 1989 release Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0).

The legendary Flight Simulator. This shot comes from the Apple II version.

World War II veteran and former test pilot Chuck Yeager served as technical consultant on the popular Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer (1989), which simulated 14 planes with flying accompanied by snippets of commentary from Yeager himself—sometimes helpful, sometimes motivational, often entertaining.

SubLOGIC released its first post-Flight Simulator sim, Flight Assignment: A.T.P., in 1990, staking claim to the title of first company to simulate civilian airline operations—including a rudimentary implementation of Air Traffic Control.

SubLOGIC's A.T.P.

Other notable non-combat flight sims include Flight Unlimited (1995), which featured ahead-of-its-time ground textures and was the first sim to offer fluid dynamics rather than direct control of airplane movements, and X-Plane, which is less a game than a complete flight sim environment—offering full customization of maps, scenery, aircraft, user interface, and more.

By the turn of the century, Flight Simulator held enough complexity and detail that novice pilots could use it for training purposes. The 2002 edition even featured artificial intelligence aircraft, which complicated flight paths and communication with airports, and introduced a 3D virtual cockpit—further shrinking the gap between the experience of piloting a virtual plane and piloting a real one.

Flight Simulator 2002

Highway to the danger zone

While Flight Simulator and ATP (then later, X-Plane) established themselves as the go-to sims for enthusiasts of civilian aircraft, others came along to add a little excitement. Before first-person shooters, combat flight sims provided a uniquely thrilling experience of action-packed first-person skirmishes and gunplay.

Notable early combat flight sims include Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot (1984), subLOGIC's Jet (1985), and MicroProse's F-15 Strike Eagle (1985), all of which were severely hampered by technological limitations. The Falcon series got its start in 1984 with F-16 Fighting Falcon on the MSX, but didn't take off until Falcon was released for the Macintosh in 1987, with bitmapped graphics and the kind of detail and realism that is the series' hallmark. Amiga users were treated to an exclusive release in F/A-18 Interceptor (1988), which took the unusual setting of the San Francisco Bay Area and was widely regarded as the best flight sim on the Amiga.

While Falcon continued to step up the realism, Dynamix and Electronic Arts tried to keep combat flight sims accessible and fun for all players—releasing Red Baron (1990) and Chuck Yeager's Air Combat (1991), respectively.

Red Baron dealt exclusively with World War I fighters, offering dogfighting and several other mission types, and, despite simplified physics, included simulation of gyroscopes, gun jams, and aircraft damage. Air Combat similarly sacrificed realism for more enjoyable gameplay, but preserved enough physics simulation to keep from feeling like an arcade game.

Dogfighting was Red Baron's specialty.

Electronic Arts competed directly with Falcon on the realism front in a series of games released under the label Jane's Combat Simulations, the first of which was called Advanced Tactical Fighters (1996). But it was Oleg Maddox, an aviation engineer, and his team at Maddox Games that developed the premier flight combat sim.

IL-2 Sturmovik, a World War II-themed sim named after a Soviet ground-attack fighter, was released in late 2001, after a protracted development cycle, and quickly made its mark on the gaming community. Maddox found that computing power necessitated compromise, but he still strove to provide the most detailed physics possible while still preserving good graphics and AI. The result was the most authentic flight sim on the market, at least until the first sequel, Forgotten Battles, arrived in 2003. Somehow, the developers created a sense of being on the edge of control, just barely keeping your plane airborne as it gets bullied by gravity, powerful air flows, and extreme torque.

A dedicated and highly knowledgeable community converged on the game, producing quality mods and helping the developers tune detail right down to engine performance at different altitudes and simulation of individual cylinders. (Novice players were not excluded from the fun, however, as realism could be turned down to make casual play possible.) IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover, the sixth entry in the main series, was released earlier this year, further laying on the realism, complexity, and content that has become the series hallmark.

The IL-2 Sturmovik series shows no signs of letting up, once again impressing with the latest entry.